Ajit Pai: ‘We Are Returning to the Original Classification of the Internet’ - Hit & Run - Reason.com - Matt Welch:
November 21, 2017 - "Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Ajit Pai announced this morning that he is submitting a proposal to repeal what he characterized as the "heavy-handed, utility-style regulation" of Internet companies adopted by the Obama administration in 2015.
"Colloquially (if misleadingly) known as 'net neutrality' ... the rules, which included classifying Internet companies as 'telecommunications services' under Title II of the 1934 Telecommunications Act instead of as 'information services' under Title I, were intended by advocates to be a bulwark against private companies discriminating against disfavored service or content providers. In practice, Pai asserted today in a statement, net neutrality 'depressed investment in building and expanding broadband networks and deterred innovation,' and amounted to 'the federal government ... micromanaging the Internet.' The measure will be voted on next month....
" Pai came on the latest installment of the Fifth Column podcast to explain and debate the announcement with Kmele Foster and myself....
Pai: Sure, so I'm proposing to my fellow commissioners at the FCC to return to the bipartisan consensus on how to think about the Internet. And so instead of putting the government in control of how it operates and how it's managed, we're going to return to the light-touch framework that was established during the Clinton administration.... Essentially, we are returning to the original classification of the Internet....Read more: http://reason.com/blog/2017/11/21/ajit-pai-we-are-returning-to-the-origina
[S]tarting with the commercialization of the Internet in the 1990s all the way until 2015, we thought of Internet access as what's called an 'information service.'....It meant that the FCC would not micromanage how it developed, how it operated. We would let the market develop, and then take targeted action if necessary to protect consumers.
In 2015, that changed, and we switched to calling it a 'telecommunication service,' essentially treating every Internet Service Provider in the country, from the big ones all the way down to the mom-and-pop fixed wireless providers in Montana, as anti-competitive monopolists to be regulated under 1934 rules that were developed for Ma Bell, the old telephone monopoly.
And so we are simply returning that classification back to the information-service one that started under President Clinton. And additionally, we are getting rid of some of the regulations that were adopted under that so-called Title II 'common carrier' classification, in terms of the various … rules that were adopted back in 2015."
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